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9of10 Blight·2/22/2017, 1:27:43 AM·4 votes·1,065 views
Why "Retard" is a Hate Crime

This article was not written by me but it echos within me.

We are a gaming family, our 3 boys play, my spouse plays and I play, our youngest daughter is an avid watcher of LCS with daddy, she also has T21, which most of you know by "Down syndrome". She is 2 years old now and has changed my world view for the better. She has opened my eyes to the ignorance i had and also to the hateful things i would say without thinking.

The league community overwhelmingly votes to punish for persons using racial slurs, or homophobic slurs, but not for people with disability. Do you consider them lesser then you? Undeserving of the rights you afford to those who have wrongly suffered to this day? Persons with intellectual disability are also people, and they have families that love them, and Lawyers that protect them.

I ask that we improve our naming standards to include "Retard" as a "must change".

Be less toxic. Please.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2011 Why "Retard" is a Hate Crime It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get confronted with a very ugly word.

"Retard"

It's used a slang, as an insult. People know that it's offensive, but they still use it. They seem to think "oh, it's slang, it's just a word, it doesn't matter." But you see, it does matter. Just because there isn't a person with intellectual disabilities there, or apparent, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Because connotations matter. The thought behind the word, it matters.

Let me show you how.

The noun "retard" comes from "mental retardation". Despite some popular belief, it is actually still used as a diagnosis for people with a low IQ score and two or more adaptive behaviours. According to the ICD-10 and the DSM-IV-TR, there are even varying degrees of it. It is considered to be an intellectual disability, and in fact, most advocates prefer the term intellectual disability rather than "mental retardation".

Why? Because of how the term "retard" is used. It is used not just towards people with intellectual disabilities, it is also used against any disabled person. It gets flung at children in the schoolyard. It gets tossed around as an insult by adults. It has been used to mock, ridicule and insult, not only non-disabled individuals, but disabled people specifically by the simple act of using a diagnosis as slang.

When you use the term "retard", you are specifically taking defining aspects of people, in this case disability, and mocking them. It's kind of like taking a person's skin colour or sexual orientation and using that as an insult. We don't use the words "%%%%%%" or "%%%got" anymore? We know better, or at least, we should know better, because there is a history of discrimination against the groups that it refers. In our supposedly more progressive society, it is no longer acceptable to use those words.

The same is with "retard", but it seems like the same regard is not applied to disabled people. It's discrimination. It says that you can target disabled people, mock and insult them, and get away with it because you can.

When you can hurt them in your head and with your words, what's to stop you from hurting them psychically? Because believe me, you're already hurting people mentally and emotionally with your words, and it doesn't take much for those types of attitudes to shift from being merely words to physical violence.

It already happens.

Right now.

Go on, look up "disabled victim", "disabled crime", "disabled violence", or "disabled murder". It is said that disabled people have at least two to five, possibly up to ten times, the risk of violence than non-disabled (Sobsey 35).

Disabled people have been beaten, robbed, sexually and physically assaulted, and murdered because of how people think of them. Because people think it's okay to use us as an insult, to mock us and degrade us, then it's okay to take things one step further and target us specifically for crimes, not just the individual, but the entire group.

Do you know what it's called when an offence is motivated by a person's membership with a group?

Hate crime

The question is, do you really mean it? Do you really want to potentially endanger people with the carelessness of your words?

Understand that ignorance as an excuse only goes so far, and intent does not mean that you are exempt from the consequences. Once you know about the potential results, you got to ask yourself how you would feel if someone mocked you for being right- or left-handed. Or being beaten because of your ethnic background? Or murdered for speaking another language? And then the people did that to you just walks away without facing any consequences, legal or otherwise?

Don't like it?

Yeah, neither do we.

Works Cited

Sobsey, Dick. Violence and Abuse in the Lives of People with Disabilities: the End of Silent Acceptance?. Baltimore: P.H. Brooks Pub. Co., 1994. Print. Posted by Corina Becker at 2:23 PM Labels: ableism, activism, civil rights, disability, speaking

21 Comments

DVVN2/22/2017, 12:07:29 PM3 votes

"Why "Retard" is a Hate Crime." Haha lets make words hate crimes. Lets make every word that someone finds offensive a hate crime! That is retarded. How about you actually parent your child instead of virtue signalling riot and the state to parent for you. How about you actually educate and protect your child from possibly violent situations. Lazy ass.

Magical Player2/22/2017, 5:56:03 AM2 votes

http://www.pitlanemagazine.com/morals-values-and-norms/why-being-offended-by-the-word-retard-is-retarded-no.html you know because posting links is cool

"Part of the problem is that the term retard is going through something similar to the colloquial transition that the word 'moron' went through but hasn't quite gotten as far yet. Moron was initially a word to describe mentally handicapped adults that had the mental state of a child. So, in theory it should be just as offensive. However, moron has evolved into a common insult that many people use playfully. Reba Mcentire called her own children morons throughout her sitcom. If she had used the word retarded she would have received political backlash. This is because the word retarded hasn't been completely absorbed into what we call harmless language. The reason this argument exists however, is because it has been transitioning into the same sphere of colloquial language as moron for some time now. It's just not there yet. There is a dilemma though. The only way to get it there is for people to use it in the same playful sense. Ironically, the only way for it to become non-offensive is for the population to use it regularly."- some redditor

I'll pose a question IN what fashion is someone allowed to discredit someone else's intelligence?

Shirvallah2/22/2017, 2:25:20 AM2 votes

Upvoted. Thank you for taking the time to post this.

9of10 Blight2/22/2017, 5:59:42 AM1 votes

examples such as, Idiot, dumbass, fool, you can find more I am positive however, you will find none of them on a medical report in this century.

9of10 Blight2/22/2017, 5:33:42 AM1 votes

Thank you, CancerBasedGod for illustrating the topic so intelligently. The casual use of a word so clearly defined as being a slur against a protected minority shows true character. Your parents must be proud.

I wonder if you would be so brazen if the topic were racial slurs? But it is my opinion that you would falter and shut your mouth.

You want to pick on someone you see as weaker, or lesser then yourself, that is a trait of bullies and also of lower intelligence.

Persons who shared similar views on who they considered lesser humans now run around in white sheets, afraid to show their faces. It seems the same applies to you as the internet doesn't give me a home address for you.

MoonWhiskers2/22/2017, 2:38:01 AM1 votes

I would really like to see the gaming industry up their standards. That is my daughter as well btw, that is mentioned. She absolutely loves to watch LCS with her dad. When the commentators get hyped up, she gets hyped up as well. I've come across toxic players that use that offensive word as their summoner names and I've reported them to no avail. The support teams response was basically that there isn't enough complaints to consider it as an offensive word. Just angers me how well they filter out the "n" word and the word "fggt", but not the "r" word. You'll notice it in the post, the article was literally copied and pasted and it automatically filtered those two words...

Geauxx2/22/2017, 1:29:15 AM1 votes

Too bad you won't get the 10-16 year olds to listen to you.